


Hand-Me-Down Tune

by janefrances



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Amnesia, Brainwashing, Fluff, M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, War
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-16
Updated: 2018-03-15
Packaged: 2019-03-22 18:36:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,167
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13770114
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/janefrances/pseuds/janefrances
Summary: Bucky and Steve have loved each other since fourth grade. When Bucky returns from the war, he doesn't even know who Steve is.





	1. 2018 - "Terrible Love"

**Author's Note:**

> I've never done anything like this before. I'm very far out of my comfort zone right now! This work is heavily influenced by the novel A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara and sad music!
> 
> Each chapter is a moment from every year Steve and Bucky have known each other.
> 
> The title is taken from Hand-Me-Down Tune by The Avett Brothers. If you haven't listened to them before, go do that right now!
> 
> Tell me what you think.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The title is taken from the song by The National of the same name.

Sometimes his dreams are so vivid, so real, that it takes Bucky half an hour to return to his life.

It takes him half an hour to accept that the life inside his consciousness is, in fact, real life. Steve can hear him from where he sleeps in the hallway, right outside Bucky's door. He can hear him rush out of bed and slowly walk around the bedroom.

Sometimes Bucky wakes up so far from himself that he can't even remember who he is. "Where am I?", he asks, despairingly, and then, "Who am I? Who am I?"

Steve enters the room carefully as to not scare Bucky. Bucky turns towards him, lost and afraid with eyes that call for help. Bucky's hand is clutching over the stump of his left shoulder. "You're James Buchanan Barnes, but you'd rather be called Bucky," Steve starts. "You are my oldest, dearest friend. You're the son of George and Winifred Barnes. You are the friend of Sam Wilson, Natasha Romanov, Tony Stark, Peggy Carter, and Gabe Jones.

"You're from Brooklyn. You live in Maine." Steve reaches for Bucky's trembling hand and steadies it with his own. "You volunteer at the animal shelter; you volunteer at the library."

Bucky leans towards Steve, his forehead rest on Steve's shoulder, their hands clasped between their chests. "You love to cook. You love music. You're a reader. You have a beautiful voice, though you never sing anymore. You're compassionate. You love going to the movies. You leave me notes around the house. You're courageous. You're kind. You're funny. You're the best listener I know. You're the most wonderful person I know, in every way. You're the bravest person I know, in every way.

"You were a soldier. You were treated horribly. You came out on the other end. You were always you."

Steve repeats the words again and again until Bucky stops crying and comes back to himself. Bucky says he wants to be alone and Steve retreats back to his pillow and blanket in the hallway.

Nights like these, Steve thinks, are the hardest. They remind him of the first months after Bucky got home when he didn't remember anything. Bucky would scream in his sleep and Steve would sleep on the floor beside his bed just to make sure he didn't hurt himself. Steve was so hopeless. Steve knows that there will always be nights like these. It's excruciatingly painful to see Bucky so helpless when they've come so far, and Steve knows these nights will never fully go away, but, he thinks, as long as he's close to Bucky to help him through the aftermath, it's not so terrible.

Steve remembers when it wasn't so hard. Bucky doesn't, but Steve does. He remembers it all.


	2. 2006 - "We're Going to Be Friends"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The title is taken from the White Stripes song by the same name.

Steve didn't like the bus because it smelled like wet feet and made him cough a lot. He didn't complain, though, because he was going on an overnight field trip to an aquarium and he had never been anywhere overnight or to an aquarium. 

He was most excited about the jellyfish. Mrs. Wren has challenged him to draw the most intricate fish he could think of, and that was the jellyfish. He liked how their bodies looked like something he could squish and play with even though he knew that if he touched one he could get  _hurt_  and that was  _bad_.

Peggy sat next to him and kept hitting him in the face with her ponytail but he didn't really care because Peggy was really nice and knew a lot about stuff Steve never even thought about. She talked to him about science and a lot of her sentences began with "Did you know...?", and Steve didn't like science at all but he never complained because she always wanted to look at Steve's drawings even though she thought art was boring.

"Show me that one again," Peggy said as the bus stopped at a red light. "The one of me with the old hat on my head." Steve flipped to the front of his sketchbook to a picture he drew with crayons at the beginning of the year. Peggy had found a red hat in the costume box in Mrs. Wren's room and posed like a detective and Steve thought she looked really cool and drew her a picture of it. Steve didn't think it was very good because he couldn't draw people that well yet but his mom told him to try anyway, even when he can't get the arms to look like real arms and wants to throw it away.  Peggy looks at the brown paper and traces the black lines with her fingers. "This one is my favorite."

"You can keep it," Steve says. He's glad Peggy likes it. Peggy is his only friend in the whole fourth grade. 

"Really?" Peggy asks, and Steve nods. He carefully tears out the paper and hands it to Peggy, who looks at it then neatly folds it twice and tucks it into her blue backpack. She then turns to Steve, hitting him with her ponytail once again, and begins talking about an episode of Bill Nye the Science Guy she watched last night. 

When the bus rolls into the parking lot of the aquarium and all the kids shuffle off the bus and everyone grabs their suitcases, Steve can't think of any words to say. Everything is so  _beautiful._

After sitting their suitcases in a room with lots of jellyfish, their guide shows them the room with sharks. Then, they see alligators, which Steve doesn't like at all, and is thankful that they had to leave that one early because some kid kept trying pet the baby one that the instructor was holding, even though she said loudly that they  _could not_  touch it.

After seeing some more exhibits, they let the kids play on the indoor playground that mimicked a tree and had lots of colorful tree frogs scattered around it. Steve sat down next to the cubbies where everyone put their shoes and began drawing the big tree frog in front of him. He couldn't color it, though, because his mom had worked hard and spent a lot of money to buy him the nice coloring pencils for his birthday and he didn't want them to get broken or lost because then he would feel  _so_  terrible.

Peggy comes to sit next to him. She loudly declares that the stingray was her favorite because she got to touch it and it was kinda gross but she didn't want to stop touching it. Steve didn't touch the stingray because it killed Steve Irwin and that was not nice.

The teachers take everybody to the to the food court to eat dinner before letting everyone roam around the building with the group leaders. One of Steve's favorite things was the conveyor belt you could stand on that took you through this tunnel and you could see the sharks swimming above you. He made Peggy ride it six times.

Later, Steve was angry because the group leader told him he couldn't put his next to Peggy's and that he had to sleep with the other boys. Steve didn't know any of the other boys in fourth grade. Peggy was sleeping next to a purple jellyfish tank. Steve didn't think it was far at all.

All of the boys had to lay their sleeping bags in a long tunnel but not the one with the conveyor belt. This one also had glass all above your head, but it also had glass on the floor so you could see everything swimming under you. Steve slept on the part that didn't have glass on the floor.

A boy laid down in a sleeping bag next to him. "What'cha drawin'?"

Steve looked up. The boy was the same one who got in trouble for touching the baby crocodile. "I'm drawing those jellyfish," He said as he pointed towards the exit of the tunnel to the room where the girls where sleeping around the glowing purple cylindrical jellyfish tanks scattered about the room. "I would go in there to draw them, but they said I had to stay over here with the boys."

The boy looks at him. "That's dumb," He says bluntly. 

"Yeah," Steve agreed. "I don't really know anyone over here, either."

"I'll be your friend." He says quickly. He grins widely and holds his hand out to shake. "Hi, my name is Bucky Barnes, and nobody here likes me because I don't listen sometimes."

Steve can't help but smile. "I'm Steve."

They talk while all of the other boys run around against the teacher's rules. Bucky likes Steve's drawings, but Steve doesn't show him the one of Peggy in case he likes her more than him. Bucky can go from really loud and excited to quiet and calm really quickly and Steve thinks it's really funny. He really loves to play football and whenever he's talking about different plays and quarterbacks, Steve doesn't get bored, even though he doesn't know what any of it means. 

By the time they go to sleep, Steve is pretty sure that Bucky, even though he didn't really do anything extraordinary, is his favorite person ever.

Long after they've stopped whispering to each other and nodded off along with the other children, Steve feels something ticklish on his nose. He goes to scratch it.

It's definitely a bug.

Steve flings about to get all of the cockroaches off of him and out of his sleeping bag, therefore waking up Bucky, who also causes a commotion, and suddenly the entire boy's hall is up and screaming about cockroaches. 

The teachers come and tell the boys that some of the cockroaches that the reptiles are fed got loose. They move them to the roo with the tree frog playground. Steve is so tired and freaked out by the feelings of bugs crawling on his skin that he keeps rubbing his arms and can't pay attention to what Bucky is saying.

"Don' like bugs, huh?" Bucky pulls one of Steve's hands from his arm and holds it in his own. It's not like a normal hand hold with all their fingers in between each other, but instead, Steve's pinky is between Bucky's middle and index finger and the rest of his fingers are sandwiched between his thumb and index finger. Steve doesn't know why he thinks it's weird. He doesn't bother fixing it. "You don't have to be scared."

Bucky squeezes his hand. Steve doesn't know what to say, so he lets go of Bucky's hand and distracts himself with laying his sleeping bag back out. Once they both lay down and everything is quiet again, Steve can see Bucky's hand laying on the floor between them. Steve puts his hand on top of it. "Thanks," Steve whispers, though Bucky is already fast asleep and snoring. "Thank you."

Steve falls asleep. He doesn't move his hand. 

He doesn't know why.

When Steve comes home to the apartment, he drops all of his bags and gives his mom a really big hug. "Oh, I missed you!" Sarah says, kissing his cheek. "I bet you had so much fun without me."

Steve tells her about all the different things he saw and the jellyfish and the cockroaches. "I made a new friend, too." Sarah raises her eyebrows. "His name is Bucky."

"That's an interesting name," Sarah says.

"It's short for James Buchanan Barnes." Steve thinks. "I wish I had a good nickname like that, but I don't think 'Sucky' would be very good."

Laughing, Sarah nods. "Yes, I don't think it'd be good either." After they're done laughing, she adds, "Well, I hope to see Bucky around sometime."

Steve smiles. He hopes so, too.

Later that day, when Steve is sat in the armchair reading Harry Potter, Steve can't help it when he thinks about Bucky when Ginny and Harry hold hands. "Mom," he says, loud, so she can hear him from the kitchen. "I held hands with Bucky."

"What?" Sarah says, entering the tiny living room with oven mitts and an apron on. 

"I held hands with Bucky." He says again, a matter of factly.

"Well..." Sarah says like Steve isn't making any sense. Steve sighs.

"It made me feel weird." He admits.

"Hm," Sarah sits on the armrest of the chair. "As long as it makes you happy, I don't see why you should not do it."

Steve thinks about it. Holding hands with Bucky didn't make him sad. It just made his stomach feel weird. 

But he doesn't want to stop holding Bucky's hand. He hopes Bucky wants to hold hands at school on Monday.

Sarah goes back to the kitchen. Steves goes back to Harry Potter. According to Harry Potter, people that are in love hold hands a lot.

That is  _very_ interesting. 

Maybe Steve will ask Bucky about it. But not soon. Later. Once Steve knows what the feeling in his stomach means. 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This school field trip was inspired by one I took in fourth grade! The cockroaches really did get out. I still have nightmares about it.   
> See you next update! Thanks for reading!


End file.
